Is the Arknights anime canon?

Arknights gives fans the option to play the mobile game or experience its story in the ongoing anime adaptation. But for those who want to stay true to the source material, is the Arknights: Prelude to Dawn anime canon?

The Arknights anime adaptation explained

Released originally in 2019 and later worldwide in 2020, Arknights is a high-quality, anime-style tower defense game. Its immense success led developer Hypergryph to create an anime adaptation in 2022. Arknights: Prelude to Dawn aired from October to December 2022. Its second season, titled Perish in Frost, began in October 2023. The series follows a post-apocalyptic future where the Doctor leads a group of scientists to find a cure for the oripathy disease.

The anime adaptation comes from Yostar Pictures, an anime studio owned by the same company as Hypergryph. This makes it an in-house project rather than an outsourced one like many other video game-to-anime projects.

How does Arknights: Prelude to Dawn connect to the game?

To be clear, Arknights: Prelude to Dawn and its sequel anime series is, by and large, a canon adaptation of the mobile game. This is because of its in-house project status, which has the original creators behind this anime version. More importantly, it adapts the actual storyline from the mobile game in a non-interactive format.

The anime storyline follows the 2019 mobile title’s story, so it feels like a fairly straightforward adaptation. Though it doesn’t cover the entire mobile game plot, it faithfully adapts the storyline with only some slight changes when it comes to improved characterization and the expansion of certain moments.

Perhaps the most unique part has to do with the Doctor. They are the main character of both the game and anime, but there are some slight differences in this case. In the mobile game, the Doctor is the player character. While the amnesia status remains across both adaptations, the Doctor has more of an active and interesting role in the anime. This may seem a bit different from the somewhat blank slate of the character in the game.

Outside of that, though, Arknights follows the canonical storyline of the mobile game. As such, you can feel free to check it out in whatever format you want. If you don’t prefer mobile games or tower defense titles, the anime is a fine way to experience the plot with its solid animation style.